Re: Proposal: Add option to add dates to write(1)

>> I think it's a very sane thing to want. I'm not convinced it's
>> infeasible; I just haven't come up with a way of doing it that I
>> consider reasonably sane [...]
> Fair enough. Your primary concern seems to be how to decide which
> among zero or more users "associated" with the terminal should
> write(1) pay attention to.
No, zero or more processes. See below.
> I might have gotten us sidetracked by introducing processes into the
> discussion. Processes are irrelevant because, as you pointed out,
> we're not notifying processes with write. We're notifying human
> beings via the terminal. The only things that matter ISTM are the
> person and the terminal.
Conceptually, I agree.
But if you're trying to express that human preference via environment
variables, that necessarily brings processes into it, because users
don't have environment variables and ttys don't have environment
variables - processes do.
> I see no problem using the preferences of the logged-in user to
> determine the date format of its message notice. It is both
> technically unambiguous and meets the POLA test.
Agreed...*if* you can find a way to implement it, a way to attach that
preference to the user, without dragging other things into it that
introduce ambiguities (like processes). There may be such a way, but
so far I haven't come up with, nor seen mentioned, one I think is sane
enough that I consider it even worth trying.
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